Articles Archive

Talking Code with the Navajo

By Peter Suciu

There is an old saying that the pen is mightier is the sword, but try telling that to anyone under fire and they will likely disagree. Read more

A Memento of Terror

By Mark E. Hubbs

Glen Binge brought his helmet home at the end of World War II. The helmet bears the names and addresses of more than 50 of his comrades. Read more

“Shenandoah Valley, September 1864,” first-hand drawing by Alfred R. Waud, a war correspondent for Harper's Weekly. On September 19, 1864, Union General Phillip Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah defeated General Jubal Early at the Third Battle of Winchester.

In the fourth summer of the Civil War, things were not going well for the Union. After more than three years of bloody conflict the Confederacy, although on the defensive and having lost significant territory, was still defiant and dangerous, while the war-weary North wondered if victory was truly attainable. Read more

Samuel Pepys

By Kelly Bell

The wind was from the southwest early on the morning of June 13, 1665, as the Dutch and British fleets deployed just off southeastern coast of England, 40 miles east of the town of Lowestoft in Suffolk. Read more

After Operation Market-Garden failed make it into Germany in September 1944, U.S. Lt. General “Lightning” Joe Collins suggested the Hürtgen Forest might offer a safer route into the Reich through the German Siegfried Line.

Into the Hürtgenwald

By Robert A. Lynn

The 1944 invasion of France, the breakout from the beaches, the surprise German counterattack in the Ardennes, and the final reckoning with the Third Reich have all been exhaustively chronicled. Read more

The Berezina Bridges

By Jonathan North

The shattered remains of Napoleon’s once brilliant Grande Armée entered Smolensk on November 9, 1812. Taking stock of the situation, the emperor realized that he and his army couldn’t possibly winter in the charred remains of the city. Read more

Members of the Military Telegraph Construction Corps, including two balancing atop freshly cut tree trunks, hanging telegraph wire near Brandy Station, Virginia.

The Telegraph

By Jim Haviland

Early in the American Civil War, during the first months of 1862, Union General Henry Halleck, commanding from his headquarters in St. Read more

Glider troops prepare for a training exercise in 1942. Glider operations were particularly risky given the light weight and wooden construction of the aircraft and the need for substantial clear ground on which to land and disgorge troops.

Off to War in a Plywood Box

By Robert Barr Smith

They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn. Read more

Early in World War II, Edward tours the front line in France with Lord Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force. With the fall of France in June 1940, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were sought by the Nazis.

King Turned Pawn

By Eric Niderost

It was around noon, June 19, 1940, when a small caravan of cars set out from Antibes in southern France en route to the Spanish border. Read more

To the Mons

By Eric Niderost

Southwestern Belgium echoed with the ceaseless tramp of heavy boots on cobbled roads as long brown lines of khaki-clad men marched into Mons and its suburbs. Read more

British Soldier, 33rd Regiment of Foot, 1780, American Revolution, Southern Campaign

The 33rd Regiment was originally raised in 1702, and gained a reputation for professionalism and military capability, thought by some observers to be unequaled in the British Army. Read more

Soldiers man a quad .50 anti-aircraft gun on the Place de la Concorde. Behind them stands the Hôtel de Crillon on the left, the Obelisk of Luxor in the center, and the Church of Madeline, to the immediate right of the Obelisk, and the French Naval Ministry on the far right. Belgian gates—German anti-tank obstacles—surround the gun nest.

Americans in Paris

By Kevin M. Hymel

Almost every soldier on western European battlefront wanted to get to Paris. Once it was liberated on August 25, 1944, it became a mecca for Allied soldiers on leave who filled the streets, bars, and historic buildings, enjoying a brief respite from the war. Read more

Erwin Wickert (center), with, from left, Shinzaku Hogen, a future Japanese ambassador to Vienna, according to Wickert, and Adam Vollhard, who wrote for the German News Agency in Tokyo.

Decades of Diplomacy

By Sherri Kimmel

I am riding a borrowed bike along the Rhine, passing the Schaum-Hof, where last night I dined on a deck overlooking the river with a stately Dutch lady friend of a friend. Read more

In an ambush led by Arminius (later known as Hermann), three Roman legions were destroyed in Germania in 9 CE. The event, one of Rome’s worst defeats, was seized upon by nationalists in the 19th-century, and later by the Nazi Third Reich, as the mythological origin of the German state. Paintings such as “The battle of Hermann in the Teutoburg Forest,” (1840) by Wilhelm Lindenschmit the Elder, helped popularize Hermann as the father of the German nation.

Havoc in the Teutoburger Forest

By Michael D. Greaney

One of the most devastating events to shake the early Roman Empire was the defeat of Legate Publius Quinctilius Varus and his army at the hands of Arminius in the Battle of Teutoburgerwald in 9 ad. Read more

10 Military History Book Reviews for Winter 2025

Full Reviews

Forged in War: A Military History of Russia from its Beginnings to Today (Mark Galeotti, Osprey Publishing, Oxford UK, 2024, 368 pp., Read more

Deck crewmen race to an SBD Dauntless dive bomber after a barrier crash. The extended tailhook failed to catch the arresting wire, but the propeller stopped the forward momentum, almost flipping the plane. Aviators claimed that SBD stood for “Slow But Deadly.”

Hard Charging Landings

By Kevin M. Hymel

To naval aviators, any landing they could walk away from was a good landing. The escort aircraft carrier USS Charger trained men in good landings, but bad landings were also part of the education. Read more

A Korean pressed into working as a slave laborer for the Japanese on the island of New Guinea receives medical treatment after his liberation. Thousands of Koreans were forced to construct installations and fortifications across the Pacific for their Japanese captors.

Korea Under the Rising Sun

By Allyn Vannoy

The first recorded encounter between American forces and Koreans in the Central Pacific during World War II came at Tarawa Atoll in November 1943. Read more

Loyalists attack Patriot earthworks at Moore’s Creek Bridge in North Carolina on February 27, 1776. Those wearing Scottish kilts, bonnets and stockings, are soldiers of the 84th Regiment who arrived from Canada and New York. Others in simple hunting shirts are likely local recruits. The figure falling on the road at right could be Lt. Col. MacLeod, who was killed in the charge.

Patriots Early Test at Moore’s Creek Bridge

By John Miles

On February 27, 1776, near the west bank of Moore’s Creek, 30 miles above Wilmington in the colony of North Carolina, Lt. Read more

Under Defeat

By Joseph Luster

Arcade shoot ‘em ups were a dime a dozen back in the day, but developer G.rev did things a little differently. Read more

Aero Fighters

By Joseph Luster

Known in Japan as Sonic Wings, the Aero Fighters series first kicked off way back in 1992. The original entry started out as an arcade game before making its way to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and now SUCCESS Corporation has its eyes set on a revival. Read more

From Around the Network

Broken Lines: The Drunk and the Dead

Japanese American National Museum

Attack on the USS Panay

Finland: Germany’s Blind Alley